1. Field of Art
The present disclosure relates to a presence engine and a method of operating a presence engine for encoding or decoding availability status into a signal representative of an audio signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Communications applications are known that take a predetermined action dependent upon the communications availability status that has been recorded for a terminating device in a communications network. Examples of such communications applications include instant messaging and push to talk (PTT) applications.
Conventional push to talk (PTT) applications are known to be used on mobile telephones and the like. The push to talk application provides a two-way radio having a bi-directional radio transceiver operating as a half-duplex channel in which only one unit transmits at a time, and any number of units can listen. Such a service allows a user of the mobile telephone to instantly reach users of other mobile telephones whilst eliminating the dialing and ringing steps that are required when making a regular cellular telephone call. Such operation is sometimes known as a “walkie-talkie” service.
In order to set up a PTT call, a user need only select the one or more contacts with which they wish to participate in a PTT call, and as long as those contacts are available, the user can hold down a PTT button on their mobile phone and speak into the microphone of their mobile phone. Initially, each participant in the PTT call can then hear the initial user who set up the call on their speaker. Once the user who set up the call has released their PTT button, any of the other participants in the PTT call can press their PTT button in order for their voice to be outputted by the speakers of the other participant's mobile telephones.
During a PTT call it is only possible for one participant in the call to transmit at any one time. When no one is transmitting, the first person to press their PTT key is allocated the right to transmit by the PTT system. Having the right to transmit is known as “having the floor”.
In order to provide an indication to the PTT system and other users regarding whether a user of a push to talk application is available or not, a user selects and records a presence status associated with themselves from a predetermined list of presence status options. The recorded presence status of the user is displayed to other users of push to talk applications on their mobile telephones. This enables users of a push to talk application to view the presence status of their contacts before deciding whether or not they wish to attempt to set up a PTT call with them.
Furthermore, a push to talk application and/or a push to talk server associated with the application, can take a predetermined action based upon a contact's presence status when a user tries to set up a PTT call with that contact. For example, if a contact's presence status is recorded as “available”, a push to talk call will be set up automatically. However, if the contact's presence status is recorded as “do not disturb”, a push to talk call will be automatically rejected. It is also possible for a contact to have a presence status of “silent”, in which case the contact will be prompted to provide an input as to whether or not they want to accept the push to talk call.
Instant messaging applications are also known, and two examples of which are MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger. These instant messaging applications allow users to send each other instant text messages over the Internet. These instant messaging applications also utilize availability of users of the application such that a person can determine the likelihood of a response when sending an instant message to one of their contacts. Examples of the availability of users that can be recorded can include: online, busy, and appear offline.
It will be appreciated that there are other application programs which store and utilize the presence availability status of the users of the programs, many of which have additional shortcomings in addition to those discussed above.